The Wishing Well: A Collection, Volume 1

By: Christopher Ruíz

Narrated by: Darren Eliker

Step into The Wishing Well, where your deepest desires are granted … and your soul is forfeited.

A horrifying collection of interconnected tales, The Wishing Well centers around an ever-shifting, unearthly bar where desires are commodities and the price is everything. Each story follows a different patron, driven by want, ambition, or desperation, who casts a wish into the bar’s namesake.

Join our patrons as they discover this well is less a cheap gimmick and more a dark conduit for twisted fulfillment, revealing the true horror of getting exactly what you wished for.

In this malignant mess of the macabre you’ll:

Meet “The Captive,” a man who’d do anything to escape his past and present. Anything …Join a young student who hopes to find happiness once again with a little help from “The Substitute.”

Take a dip in “The Lake” for rest, relaxation, and a final, permanent reprieve.

From a woman’s late-night visit by “The Creeper” to a child’s Christmas visit by something not quite Santa in “The Unholy,” these nine creepy tales are served neat by newcomer Christopher Ruíz.

What do you desire? The Wishing Well has what you need …

©2025 Christopher Ruíz (P)2025 Christopher Ruíz

very good writing, a wordsmith and a story teller

The narrator was a great choice, it felt like he embodied the dark parts of these stories. The stories themselves left me on the edge of my seat each. and every damn time! the writer weaved the english language beautifully, and told some incredable stories. if you like the Horror genre, you will love this book.

Interconnected tales of dark desire and dread

It's 4am as I submit this review. I've been unable to pause this collection of short stories for the last several hours. Each one, in first-person telling, creates a captivating experience of being emotionally invested in, then smothered in the storyteller's deepest feelings of delight, doubt, despair, and dread. The tales are varied and timely, expertly voiced in silky-smooth tone by Darren Eilker, whose delivery of psychological terror is as cool as a freshly poured beer. (Whet brand, of course.) Brought back fond memories of Heavy Metal (1981). [Disclosure: I received this title for free and listened at 2.9x.]

Flawed, but still very good for a debut.

I'll try to keep this short. Yes, I would recommend this story to any horror fan. Some of the stories are great, some are good, and some missed the mark for me. The biggest problem I have is that even though this is an anthology, the stories feel very disconnected. The Wishing Well as a setting feels more like a gimmick than a central point of the story. That is to say, I felt like most of the time the wish had nothing to do with the consequences and the ensuing terror, to the point that I almost wish that the Bar wasn't included in the story. The last story, The Blind, is the only one without a direct connection to The Wishing Well, and it's by far my favorite of the whole.

The stories do have a lot of potential: the writing is beautifully grotesque, the stories feel eerie and actually terrifying, but they are hindered by slow pacing and unlikable characters. I think more editing was needed. Still, it's a great debut, and I will be following the author to see what else he creates.